Summary

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Here's a round-up of this morning’s main developments:

Syria

•George Sabra, the acting president of the Syrian National Coalition, is to hold a press conference today discussing the twin car bombings in Turkey that killed 46 people, in an attack that has further raised tensions between Ankara and Damascus and fuelled fears that the conflict is spreading across the region. The Assad government denies it was involved. The incident took place on Saturday in Reyanhli, in the Hatay region, a hub for Syrian refugees and armed rebels. Nine Turkish citizens were reportedly arrested and have confessed. "This incident was carried out by an organisation which is in close contact to pro-regime groups in Syria and I say this very clearly, with the Syrian mukhabarat [intelligence service]," the Turkish interior minister, Muammer Guler, told Turkish TV. Sabra is also expected to discuss the international conference on Syria proposed by John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. Coalition officials said yesterday the umbrella opposition group recognised by the west would meet on 23 May to decide whether to participate in the conference and elect a new head.

I was very heartened that while it is no secret that Britain and Russia have taken a different approach to Syria I was very struck in my conversations with President Putin that there is a recognition that it would be in all our interests to secure a safe and secure Syria with a democratic and pluralistic future and end the regional instability.

We have a long way to go. But they were good talks and I am looking forward to now taking them up with President Obama and seeing if we can turn this proposal for a peace process and a peace conference into something that can make a real difference.

Britain and France are pushing for the EU arms embargo on the rebels to be lifted this month.

•The activist group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict from Britain using a network of contacts in Syria, claimed 82,257 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war so far.In February the UN’s human rights chief, Navi Pillay, said the death toll was probably approaching 70,000. Since then activists have reported death tolls of around 150 people a day, which fits with the Observatory’s new figure. The Observatory’s figure cannot be verified, and many consider both these daily tolls and the UN figure underestimates.

•Another activist group, the Local Co-ordination Committees, said that 91 people were killed across the country yesterday, including 33 in Damascus and its suburbs and 13 in Hama. The Syrian Network for Human Rights, another activist group, said 88 people had been killed, 33 in the capital. This morning the Observatory reported that government troops had retaken full control of Khirbet Ghazaleh, a town near the motorway linking Damascus with the Jordanian border, one of several recent government gains. The groups’ figures and reports could not be verified because media access to Syria is limited.

•Rebels yesterday released four Filipino UN peacekeepers they said they had been holding "for their own safety" after clashes last week with government forces put them in danger. A spokesman for the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade said the four were handed over at a border checkpoint where the Jordanian and Israeli borders join the Golan Heights.

Egypt

Israel

•The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has run into controversy after it emerged that he ordered a double bed to be installed on a plane that carried him and his deeply unpopular wife, Sara, to Baroness Thatcher's funeral in London last month – at a cost of $127,000 (£83,000).Harriet Sherwood reports from Jerusalem.